Can It Get Any Worse?: Chapter 5

With no small amount of awe, the senshi and I, along with a pair of
talking cats watched Usagi's eyes flutter open and I could easily see
a glaze fade from her eyes that I had never even noticed was there.
Must've been something important locked away in there.

"Are you well, Usagi?" Luna asked worriedly.  If she had been human
she would have been biting her nails.

"Yeah, sure.  Why is everyone looking at me like that?  Do I have
something on my face?" No one responded.  A plane of air in front of
Usagi solidified and became reflective.  She examined herself in the
makeshift mirror and shrugged when she found nothing wrong.  I
absolutely know that I hadn't taught her how to do that.  Sure Ami
knew how, but hers are always slightly blue tinted.  This one was
completely colorless.

If her overall intelligence improves along with her magical
capability, there may yet be hope for the world."Hey Usagi, what's
three plus three?" I asked.

"Six," she responded without thinking.  I couldn't help myself.  I
looked into the coudless blue sky and mouthed the words,'Thank you'.
I got over the shock faster than anyone else and spent an hour
quizzing Usagi.  The girl had a lot of magical knowledge pertaining to
white sorcery in her head.  That's all the mystical info she had.  The
three nonaligned spells I had managed to cram into her divinely
thickened skull were forgotten.  I patterned her a pure white spell
that yours truly created, one designed to keep boogey men(they really
exist) from congregating under your bed.  She literally sucked the
pattern out of the air!

All other attempts at getting the same results with varying classes
and levels of magic were complete failures.  She wouldn't be much good
in a fight against anything non-hellspawned, but watch out if you are!
This development had several other advantages.  Usagi was no longer
terminally braindead, or so I gathered from our short chat.  The
Silver Imperium Crystal was about as useful to her now as a chunk of
concrete.  And I didn't have to teach her anymore!  I didn't count the
few hours it would take to teach her all the white aligned spells I
knew that she didn't.

The senshi decided to take their leader out to celebrate.  I didn't
want to be within range of that much concentrated girlishness.  No
more wasting time and energy on finding a new home and now I could
really accelerate the lessons for the others.  Two or three years and
I'd be gone.

I opened my door and nearly tripped over an envelope that had been
slipped under the door.  I didn't immediately open it.  Once the pit
that is my stomach had been adequately satisfied and I'd reverted to a
guy, I got around to it.  Turns out Setsuna's webbed fingers don't
stop her from writing afterall.

Dear Bastard,

I may not be able to do anything to you now, but when the conditions
of the pact are met, you are mine!

,Your executioner
Setsuna Meiou

The words were barely legible and there were traces of slime on the
note.  I didn't fail to get the message.  She couldn't mess with my
past or the pact would never have happened and we wouldn't have met
and I wouldn't have made her life hell.  She couldn't sic the senshi
on me because they already liked me more than her and I did have the
ring.  I'm pretty confident that I can fight off a temporal assault.
I'm not stupid enough to have absolute confidence against a Temporal
mage safely hidden away at the Gates of Time, a place where I won't be
able to reach when the pact is fulfilled.

Only option with one hundred percent survival rate?  Separate myself
from her sphere of influence.  In other words, move to another
universe.

****

A lot more time went by than I would have thought before the
government called up begging me and my 'proteges' to pull their asses
out of the fire.  Fools should have known better than to perform a
seaince(you know, hold hands in the dark and chant to call up spirits
and other bad stuff) on a secret warlock burial ground.  What were
they trying to do, see what they guy wiped his ass with?  Any spirit
that has been emtombed for as long as this one had isn't going to be
good for much more than that.

"I'm game," I said to the senshi."It's a paying job and really
shouldn't be too hard.  All we have to do is rescue a group of
scientists.  None of you even have to do any work, just come along to
make sure nobody interferes with me when I'm busy." Bad things can
happen when people do that.  I think that's what sunk Atlantis.

The man in charge was kind enough to have a helicopter ride out to the
site arranged for us.  It was one of those expensive deals that is
quieter than a hummingbird.  I was hopping around in my seat like a
nervous child by the time we arrived at the closest possible landing
site.  This was the kind of find that people like me, wizards,
sorcerers, warlocks, etc, all dreamed about.  The practice of
separating oneself from reality at the moment of death had been
stopped millenia ago, once it was discovered by some halfway
intelligent wizard that the spirit left behind within its own tiny
little bubbleverse suffers immense pain for eternity, kinda like hell,
only worse.  If you could find an ancient tomb like this, and had the
proper training, which I did, you could use the energy to forge a
magical tool of immense power.  Ever heard of excalibur?

The raw power of Usagi's crystal, which I now have reason to believe
may be one of those magical tools created at a very powerful tomb, is
nothing compared to the 'pure' energy that can be found contained
within the bubble that contains the spirit.  I don't know why it works
that way.  No one does.  I once read a theory that only went so far as
to guess that since there were no other forces within the
microverses(better term in my opinion) besides the relatively weak
energy of a single spirit, that magic is distilled into its most basic
form.

Whatever the reason, I was getting me something special today.  I
really couldn't decide what I wanted to make it into.  Now that I
think about it, what I would be getting my hands on today would be a
tiny piece of creation itself.  I would get to actually Make
something.  Whatever I wanted(within reasonable limits).  Poor
Setsuna, she was going to be one miserable bitch come tomorrow.

"You certainly are excited, Ranma," Ami commented moments before the
aircraft began landing.

"This is sorta like my birthday times a million," I confessed.  None
of them would understand what was happening, not even Usagi and her
little cranial library.  White magic doesn't work well when
interfering with reality.  Makes me wonder why someone created the
crystal just to hand it over to the All Mighty's bastard...nevermind,
answered my own question.

Ami only gave me a puzzled look.  The other senshi were too busy
staring at the column of rainbow light rising from the top of the
little mountain we would soon be flying to, under our own power.

****

"Don't let anything within twenty feet of me," I ordered."Not a cute
little butterfly or a flying saucer.  If the Emperer himself shows up
and wants to kiss my feet, vaporize him." I pointed to the five
scientists trapped within the column of light being given off by the
breached tomb.  They didn't look happy.  In fact from the screaming
and incoherent begging, I got the impression that they would have
peeled their own skin off If it would have helped them escape."I don't
want to end up like that, and I hope none of you do."

"What if it's a cute little kitten?" Usagi asked.  She may not be an
idiot, or an inept sorcerres any longer, but she was still an
airheaded teenage girl.

"If it's your own mother," I insisted.  She glared at me.  I smiled
pleasantly and she turned to look at the screaming people.  She
nodded.

Finally prepared, I made a small cut on the inside of my left forearm
and thoroughly coated the blade of my athame in my own blood.  The air
crackled with energy and the ground trembled as I began to chant in a
language so dead and ancient that I didn't even know what continent it
originated on.  As the ritual continued, the world fell away from my
perceptions.  Soon all I could sense were tiny flares of energy far
behind me that signified the senshi standing guard.  Within moments
even that small bit of sensory input faded away.  My mind, with the
full backing of every shred of power I could muster, was now being
propelled through that place between existances where an instant can
last an eternity and infinity can go by in the blink of an eye.  For
obvious reasons, I have no idea how long I travelled this way.

When I found my target my powers were nearing their limit.  That
didn't matter, the hard part was over.  Mentally, because I had no
form here, I reached out to the pathetic little ovoid of milky colored
wavering light.  The shock of contact was almost orgasmic in its
intensity.  Carefully, so as not to lose too much energy, I opened a
gateway in that microverse smaller than an electron.  Despite the
surrounding environment, I'm sure that no time passed between that
action and a streak of blue light created by the escape of the soul
trapped within being jettisoned back towards the relatively more
pleasant realm of hell.

With the soul gone, the microverse collapsed in on itself, becoming
nothing more than a mote of intense light.  Within my mind I pictured
the form I wished that energy to take.  I decided earlier to follow
the example of the creator of the Silver Imperium Crystal.  Properly
aligned, I could use such a crystal, one of my own making, to imitate
almost anything that I could create now.  And I wouldn't be limited to
a simple energy source.  No, my crystal would act as a lens for my own
energy.  No danger of burning myself out that way.  Combine it with
the Silver Imperium Crystal...well I'm not really greedy, I don't want
to challenge the All Mighty.

The milky, multi-faceted crystal took shape in my mind and formed
simultaneously in reality.  Exhausted, I let consciousness fall away,
avoiding a potentially painful reentry into my body.

****

I couldn't have been out long.  The sun hadn't moved perceptibly at
all.  I stood shakily, hastily absorbing my crystal into my hand.  I
was too tired to try using it at the moment.  The flattened
mountaintop had been exposed to an awesome amount of heat, enough to
leave it bubbling in most places and a thick layer of volcanic glass
in the areas that had cooled.  The senshi were all safely ensconced
within shields of varying colors.  I winced as I took in the sight of
five badly charred individuals standing where the scientists had been
transfixed.  They weren't suffering any longer.  Heh.

"Oops," I said.

"'Oops' is all you can say?!" Rei shouted at me.  I did deserve a
little verbal abuse."Why don't you come over here and have a look at
what you've done?"

Not in the mood to argue, I slowly gathered up some of the energy
floating around, there was lots to go around, and tested out my new
lens.  Even with my diminished energy levels and physical exhaustion,
I was able to cool the molten rock with hardly any effort.  I
staggered over to Rei, who had lowered her shield once the danger from
the lava was gone.  She silently pointed to the bottom of the
mountain, then swept her arm from side to side.

"Oops," I repeated.  What else can you say when you've just
accidentally transported a mountain, yourself, and a gang of
sorceress' in training to another universe?  They didn't know we
weren't in our own dimension.  The senshi weren't that sensitive.
They probably just thought we were somewhere in China or something.  I
hadn't even noticed the subtle differences in the ambient energy at
first.  All that late night exploring had paid off, sorta.

With the lens' help, I began restoring my reserves of energy at a nice
break neck pace that would have turned me into a cinder unaided.  How
was I going to break the news?  Better yet, how were they going to
react when they found out that I wasn't sure if I could get us home?

Transdimensional plane hopping isn't to be taken lightly.  Home
coordinates and destination coordinates have to be firmly established.
I hadn't done either.  I was about to spill my guts when an idea
struck me.  Why did this have to be my fault at all?  I could blame it
on one of the senshi, Usagi would work best, and be just another
unfortunate victim.  Hell, for all I knew, this really wasn't my fault
at all.

"Wait a minute," I said suspiscously,"who didn't follow instructions?
Which one of you let something get too close?" I demanded.  No one
came forward, not that I had expected anyone to.  I let them get
indignant and angry at one another, with Rei looking ready to bitch
slap Usagi, before deciding to play peace maker.

"I'm sorry I blamed you guys," I said understandingly."There was a lot
of area for just five of you to cover." I felt a little bad about
manipulating them, but it saved me a lot of trouble and didn't strain
their friendships.

They accepted that explanation readily enough."Where do you think we
are, Ranma?" Minako asked.

I shouldn't keep the truth from them.  Here it comes."We're not really
on Earth anymore.  Actually, we're not in our home universe any
longer."

Ami was the first to understand the implications of that statement.
In a frightened whisper, she asked,"Ranma, do you know how to get us
home?"

Ah, geeze.  They all began giving me the frightened puppy dog look,
complete with big giant, moistly shining eyes."I know 'how' to get us
home," I answered honestly."I just don't know where home is."

****

We were all sitting around a good sized fire that I had made when the
temperature started to drop as evening approached.  Usagi was crying
on Rei's shoulder.

"I can find our home dimension, eventually.  It'll take a shit load of
searching, but I can do it.  Problem is that I don't have the
necessary tools to do that.  We're gonna have to hope this world is at
least partially civilized, because I know how to magically polish and
silver a mirror, but I don't have any idea how to get the quality of
glass needed for the proper spells.  That's only one essential item.
I can probably improvise most of the others, it'll just take longer."
To tell you the truth, I didn't much mind being on this world,
wherever it was.  The naturally occuring free energy that powered most
magic was of a higher level and quantity here.  The air was actually
fresh, too.

"And I called Shingo a goat faced punk this morning," Usagi told Rei's
shoulder.  We ignored the blubbering girl.

"If we can find food and water, this shouldn't be too bad an
experience," Makoto said with false cheer."I haven't been camping in
years."

"That's the spirit.  Tomorrow I'll find us something to eat and I'll
work out a spell to lead us to the nearest people." If there were any
people."Well, I'm beat, g'night." For lack of anything better to sleep
on, I conjured up a cushion of air and made myself comfortable.

****

Three days later, after fighting off swarms of mosquitos and living
off berries and a variety of wombat that I had convinced the girls was
giant rabbit, we found a dirt road.  It was the first sign of
civilization and cheered the senshi and me up significantly.  My
tracking spell was generally effective.  I think that the population
was just too spread out for it to work as well as I'd hoped.

"Time to take a vote," I announced.  Little things like that keep
people happy."Which way do we go?" I was pretty sure they would say
east.  West led towards some unpleasant looking mountains.  Unanimous
decision.  East.

Some time later, I asked,"Why don't we just fly?" I was embarassed
that I hadn't thought of it earlier.

The girls all blushed.  Yep, they were asking themselves the same
question.

"One of us should have thought of this earlier, like three and a half
days ago," Makoto said, raising her voice so she could be heard over
the wind.

It's hard to say for certain, but I'd estimate we were travelling at
about a hundred kilometers an hour.  Plain dumb luck should lead us to
something besides more road.  Roads much longer than what we'd already
travelled weren't very practical unless they had towns or some kind of
hotel or supply depot along the way.  That would be even more
important in a preindustrial society.  I'm starting to sound like Ami.
Not the worst of the choices.

I didn't comment on that topic, instead asking,"Have any of you
noticed the higher energy index of this planet?" I hadn't mentioned
this earlier and was wondering if any one of the girls was naturally
sensitive enough to pick up on the fact without it being pointed out
to them.

Suprisingly, they all said they had felt something unusual.  Minako,
Makoto, and Rei had only felt a slight charge in the air.  Usagi and
Ami were seeing things as brighter than normal even though the light
level was so close to our natural sun as to be indistinguishable and
thought they saw and felt odd little crackles of energy when they
worked magic.  Now that Usagi was a mostly normal girl, I had a much
weaker urge to murder her.  She was turning out to be a dependable
teammate too.

Argh, this camaraderie crap is contagious!

****

Our little dirt road joined with a much larger one made of
painstakingly carved granite blocks interlocked with one another like
pieces of a puzzle.  The different shades and colors of the stone made
the road more than an impressive piece of civil engineering.  It was
actually a work of art.

"I wish I had my camera," Minako lamented after a suitable amount of
time gawking.  Geeze, it was a road, not a naked woman.

"Just get a clear picture of it in your head and whenever we get home
you can imprint it on photographic paper," I assured her."I taught you
that spell the week before last.

"Oh yeah, I kinda forgot about it. Thanks for reminding me."

"This really is an astounding structure," Ami said, while viewing a 3-
D image generated by her computer."I've been able to distinguish over
seven hundred varieties of granite here.  That shouldn't be possible."

"This isn't Earth," I reminded."This isn't even our universe.  For all
it's similarities to Earth, there could be just as many differences.
This is just a minor one." If something like this was gonna happen, I
wish it could have a waited a few years or at least until the girls
really understood what was happening.

The Road ran perpendicular to our dirt one, heading off as far as the
eye could see to the north and south.  A few miles further east,
through a stand of some kind of blue leaved trees, there was an ocean.
It could have been a really big lake too, if lakes ever got that
choppy.  I hadn't been to the beach in years."Before we head out
again, do any of you want to go for a swim?"

Minako was the only one reluctant and that was because she didn't have
a swimsuit.

"Don't be silly," Makoto said teasingly."It's just us girls here." We
all nodded encouragingly at her.  Inside my head there was a giant
evil grin.

"I guess," she seemed more embarassed at her reluctance itself than
the prospect of being nude in front of her friends.

I checked to make sure the water wasn't posionous or infested with
microscopic piranha or any other unpleasnat suprise before letting the
other girls into the water.  The water was only slightly salty.  I
turned back toward the other to make sure they made it into the water.
Hint, wink, nudge, grin.  All of the senshi are really much more
mature physically than your standard everyday sixteen year old girl.
And they're hot.  No two ways to say it.  And they all had pierced
nipples.  What in hell?!

"What in hell?!" I shouted, forgetting to ride out the next wave and
nearly choking on a mouth full of seawater.  I was quickly rescued,
needlessly, by three of the senshi.  I let Rei give me mouth to mouth
for a few seconds before pretending to start breathing again.

"Are you hurt?  What happened?  Why did you go so far if you can't
swim?" I endured their barrage of worried questions, slightly touched
that they cared.  Don't make a big deal out of it.

I told them that I had stepped into a hole and lost my footing.  They
believed me.  Then I pretended to just happen to notice the
piercings."Um, why are your nipples pierced?  Not that they don't look
great and all, you girls just don't seem like the type."

They all looked at Makoto.  She blushed, finally answering,"We were
having a sleep over at my apartment and I fixed a bunch of snacks and
punch and stuff like that.  I spiked the punch a little..."

"But none of us knew that and we all spiked it a little too," Rei said
guiltily.

"We still can't figure out who's idea it was," Ami said,
absentmindedly toying with the small gold ring in her right
breast."All I can remember is waking up and they were already there."

"I remember most of it," Usagi added.

"And since we already had had it done, we decided to keep them,"
Minako finished.

Well.  Well, well, well.  Maybe my little students weren't so innocent
afterall."That's cool.  When we get back home, I might see about
having it done too." Not that that statement was in any way honest.  I
use too much direct energy to ever have any kind of metal in such
close contact with my body.  In fact, Makoto probably would have
electrocuted herself by now if she wasn't so closely bound to her
element.

My last comment broke down into a debate on whether gold or silver was
better, then if hoops or bars were more attractive.  I was really
enjoying myself.  They just kept playing with their tits!  A storm
coming in off the ocean interrupted the little party.  A bitterly cold
wind preceded the black clouds.  With no shelter in sight and having
no desire to be stranded in such bad weather, I said,"Get your stuff
together and I'll make us a little magic tent." Previously, before the
ritual that had secured my crystal(I still haven't been able to think
of a good name for it) it would have been an exhausting experience
maintaining any kind of spell within a storm as fierce as this one
promised to be.  Now I could use the excess energy that I would have
had to fight to keep the spell cohesive to actually hold it in place.

The dome was pretty spacious, with a sand bottom that was partially
wet.  I covered most of it in an invisible cushion of air, but at
Usagi's request, I left enough of it exposed for her to build sand
castles.

"So these last few nights when we were all being chewed up by swarms
of mosquitos, you could have just made this?" Rei asked, deceptively
calm.

"Uh huh," I answered, lounging comfortably on the air cushion.

"Why didn't you?" Still much calmer than she felt.

"No one ever asked and I've already taught you the spell that keeps
insects away.  Ami used it.  I guess you forgot.  Sorry." I sounded
sleepily disinterested.  Rei lunged at me, more playfully than the
last dozen or so times.  I lazily raised my hand and allowed a tiny,
almost imperceptible arc of electricity to fly from it and directly to
Rei's right nipple ring.  She yelped like a kicked dog and screeched
in pain. "Play nice," I warned the glaring girl.  Waving a finger that
trailed sparks into the air.  I hadn't really hurt her, I knew.  She
could have brushed her hair and gotten more of a charge than what I
just used.

Rei had a maniacal gleam in her eyes that amost made me raise my
shields.  I noticed that she was lookin at Usagi instead of me and
relaxed.  Fire being the girl's element, it was difficult for her to
create any kind of electrical energy, but when she managed to call it
up, Rei's effort was a sizable charge about ten times stronger than
what I used on her.  I winced in sympathy for Usagi and covered my
ears.

The scream was blood curdling and Usagi's spasming leg caused her to
destroy what she had claimed to be a copy of the palace she had once
lived in during her previous life.  It had looked pretty good.  A few
minutes later I was forced to restrain the two girls who were really
going at it.

"It was just a joke!" Rei swore vehemently."I didn't mean for it to be
that strong, Usagi.  I promise!" The big hand print on the side of her
face would definitely leave a mark.

Usagi glared at her friend, all the while rubbing at her pained
nipple.  What had I started?  I sighed and let fly with another charge
of electricity, equal to what Rei had used on Usagi.  Rei flopped
around like a fish out of water.  When she stopped screaming, both her
and Usagi were glaring at me."Hey, don't look at me like that.  I did
it to Rei because she was trying to gouge my eyes out again.  Rei did
it to you out of sheer bitchiness.  I did it to Rei again so that she
would have the common sense not to try it again."

The other senshi had watched in a mix of fascination, awe, and horror.
I couldn't blame them for protectively covering their chests with
their arms.  Those things are a lot more sensitive than a guy's.  For
obvious reasons, I know all to well.

"I'm sorry that I started this crap.  There.  Now I'm going to go to
sleep and we're going to forget that this ever happened." I made
myself comfortable and closed my eyes.  Things would be back to normal
tomorrow, if a little strained between Usagi and Rei

****

Author's Notes:  Another one.  I'm once again finishing this one up at
about five in the morning, so I'll just leave the notes to a thanks
for the responses and a good night to everyone out there.  C&C welcome
at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com